THE SCAVENGER'S DAUGHTER

Thompson’s mystery-thriller follows an ex-FBI agent on his torturous mission to discover his lover’s killer.

Jack Sturdevant has a history of insubordination—after 9/11, as an FBI agent, he became disillusioned with the agency’s internal handling of the tragedy, so he leaked classified information to a New York Times reporter. That led to the resignation of the U.S. attorney general and, after the FBI discovered his disloyalty, the end of Sturdevant’s career. Backstory plays too large a role in Thompson’s page-turner, but once the real action gets rolling, it doesn’t let up. Eventually, Sturdevant finds out that his colleague and unrequited love was murdered during an undercover investigation into a barbaric human trafficking ring. After losing his job with the FBI, Sturdevant had been living a life of leisure as the self-appointed spokesperson of the campaign to end human trafficking, so his lover’s murder during her investigation strikes him doubly deep. Jack bursts out of retirement to use all of his training and skills to avenge the death of the woman he loved—from there, it’s a somewhat unrealistic metamorphosis into a modern day Indiana Jones. Luckily, Thompson succeeds in making Sturdevant worth the emotional investment, so even though the plotline is too extreme at points, Sturdevant’s crusade of vengeance forges a taut connection with readers along for the ride. Sturdevant’s slowly revealed inner psyche exposes readers to the intense agony he feels for the woman he lost, the child he couldn’t save and his core-shaking disenchantment with bureaucracy.